In Distant Waters (34 page)

‘Fuck me! It's the Cap'n!'

The pike-head whistled past his face as the wielder put it up. Suddenly all opposition melted away, there were friendly faces round him, men he had known once, long ago, long ago when he had commanded the
Patrician
 . . .

But it was not Valhalla he woke to, nor had it been the faces of the dead he had seen. Some intelligence beyond mere consciousness had allowed him to faint at last, recognising his part in the fight need no longer be sustained. His men had followed him, wiping out the stain of their desertion.

Somewhere far above him voices were discussing him. Impertinent voices that spoke as though he was nothing more than a blood-horse whose health was uncertain.

‘Will he pull through, Mr Lallo?'

‘Of course, Mr Q, 'tis only a drop of blood he's lost. He'll save me the trouble of prescribing a remedy. There's nothing serious, though that cut in his
gluteus maximus
will embarrass him . . .'

‘His
what
?'

‘Arse, Mr Q. He'll not sit for a week without it reminding him of its presence.'

Quilhampton laughed. ‘I'll go and see about some food . . .'

‘Go and find him a bottle of port. Nothing reconstitutes the blood better than a fortified wine.'

‘There's some excellent
oloroso
aboard the
Virgen
 . . .'

‘What a damnably blasphemous name . . . go and get some then . . .'

‘You're a pair of impertinent dogs,' Drinkwater muttered, fully conscious.

‘There, Mr Q, I told you recovery would be complete . . . welcome aboard, sir.'

‘Thank you Mr Lallo, how many men do we muster?'

‘I believe they call you “Captain Mack”,' Drinkwater said. His wounded buttock still troubled him and he preferred to stand, his back to the stern-windows, a grim imperturbable silhouette regarding his prisoner. Mack's eyes were defiant, truculent. He nodded, but held his tongue.

‘I understood you did your hunting further south, amid the barrens of California.'

‘They ain't barrens,' said Mack shortly, with a half-smile that was at once menacing and secretive.

‘Perhaps not,' replied Drinkwater dismissively; he had learned the term in the American War and its precise meaning was unimportant now.

‘You are a citizen of the United States of America, are you not?'

‘I suppose I am . . .'

‘You
suppose
?'

‘In so far as I'm under any man's jurisdiction. I reckon to be born free, Mister, I respect it in others, I expect it from them.'

‘Meaning you could have shot to kill me when we disturbed you at your office?'

‘Sure. I can hit a running moose . . .'

‘You didn't respect the freedom of my men, you turned them over to the Russians.'

‘Hell, Cap'n, that's bull-shit. You didn't respect their freedom either, an' that's supposing they was free in the first place, instead of run from this here ship.'

Drinkwater smiled. ‘But you didn't turn 'em over to the Russkies for love of Old England . . .'

‘Sure as hell I didn't.'

‘Then why?'

‘They was trespassin', Cap'n.'

‘So were you, on Spanish territory. Did you sell 'em?'

‘What the hell would I want with roubles, Cap'n?' the mountain-man answered contemptuously.

‘I presume you require powder and shot,' Drinkwater replied coolly, ‘and gold is always gold . . .'

A spark of something flared in the mountain-man's eyes, hostility, malice perhaps, Drinkwater could not be sure beyond knowing he had touched a nerve.

‘You are a solitary, Captain Mack. A man apart. I do not pretend to understand your motives and my men would have you hang for your treachery.'

‘I promised them nothing!'

‘Maybe not. Would you have me hand you over to the Spanish authorities at San Francisco . . . ?'

Patrician
lifted to the swell and leaned gently over to the increasing breeze as, on deck, Lieutenant Fraser crowded on sail. Drinkwater smiled with grim satisfaction, for a wave of nausea passed visibly over Mack's features.

‘You will do as you please, I reckon,' he said with some difficulty. Drinkwater jerked his head at Sergeant Blixoe.

‘Take him below, Sergeant.'

He could afford clemency. It was good to have them all back together. Fraser, Lallo, Mount, Quilhampton, even the lugubrious chaplain, Jonathan Henderson. He looked astern through the cabin windows where, under Hill and Frey, the
Virgen de la Bonanaza
danced in their wake. Perhaps best of all was to see little Mr Belchambers's cheerful smile, for Drinkwater did not think he could have brought himself to have written to explain the boy's loss to his trusting parents. It was true that there were still men missing, men who had been pressed by the Spaniards to labour on the wharves of San Francisco, but for the great majority the raid on the outpost on the Columbia River had reunited them in spirit, wiping out memories of discontent, disloyalty and desertion. It was less easy for Drinkwater to forget the depths to which he had sunk, of how near he had been to
suicide; less easy to forget the risks he had run in his desperation, but the raid had had its effect, paltry enough though it had been in terms of military glory. They had landed by boat in the mist of early morning in a brief and bloody affair in whch all the advantage had been with the assailants. They had carried off all that they had not destroyed, even Tregembo's swine, setting fire to the fort with the same enthusiasm they had burnt the first brig.

Drinkwater turned from the stern windows and glanced down at the chart on his table. They would do the same to the Russian outpost at Bodega Bay, where the mysterious mountain-man had first enslaved his own deserters. His men would enjoy that and he could set free Captain Mack, leave him to his damnable wilderness. Then he would return to San Francisco. His heartbeat quickened at the thought of confronting the Arguello brothers. How unexpected were the twists of fortune and how close he had come to ending his own life in the cell below the
Commandante
's residence. If it had not been for Doña Ana Maria . . .

He forced his mind into safer channels. His first consideration was the destruction of the second Russian post at Bodega Bay.

Lieutenant Quilhampton jumped into the water of Bodega Bay and led the men ashore. They splashed behind him, Mount leading the marines, Frey with his incendiary party. They met only token resistance. A couple of shots were fired at them out of bravado, but the two grubby wretches immediately flung down their muskets and surrendered. Surprise had been total and the British party entered the now familiar stockade with its stink of urine, grease and unwashed humanity, to set about its destruction.

Only when he saw the flicker of flames did Drinkwater leave the ship in the boat. In the stern-sheets, escorted by two of Mount's marines, sat Captain Mack. Wading ashore with the mountain-man's long rifle, Drinkwater indicated that the marines were to follow him with their prisoner. As they walked towards the blazing pine logs that exploded and split in great upwellings of sparks as the resin within them expanded and took fire,
they met Quilhampton's party escorting a pathetic collection of bearded
moujiks
back to the boats.

‘Where's the commandant?'

‘No one seems to be in command, sir, just this handful of peasants.'

‘He's a-fucking Indian women, Cap'n, or lying dead-drunk under a redwood tree,' drawled Captain Mack.

‘Very well. Let him go.' Drinkwater motioned to the marines and they stood back. He jerked his head at the mountain-man. ‘
Vamos!
'

Mack half-smiled at the irony, but held out his hand. ‘My gun, Cap'n.'

‘You get out of my sight now. When my boat pulls off the beach I'll leave your rifle on that boulder. You can get it then.'

‘You don't trust me?'

‘Somebody once told me the Cherokees called you people Yankees because they didn't trust you.'

‘Ah, but others called us English then . . .'

Mack grinned, reluctantly acknowledging an equal and stalked away. He did not look back and his buckskins were soon as one with the alternate light and shade that lay beneath the trees. Drinkwater turned back to the incendiary roar and crackle of the burning fort when there came a shout, the snap of branches and a roar of anger. Drinkwater spun round.

Mack was running back towards them, pursued by a dark figure in an odd, old-fashioned full-length waistcoat. The man had lost his wig and hat but he held out a pistol and, as he took in the sight of the burning fort, he fired it screaming some frightful accusation after Mack. The mountain-man fell full length, his spine broken by the ball and Drinkwater ran up to him as he breathed his last. Behind Drinkwater the marines brought down the wigless Russian.

Drinkwater bent over the dying Mack. ‘. . . Thought . . . I'd betrayed . . .' he got out through clenched teeth, and Drinkwater looked at the Russian, rolling beneath the bayonets of the marines. It must have been the returning commandant, misinterpreting the mayhem before him as his post blazed and Mack walked insouciantly away from the scene.

Drinkwater watched as life ebbed from the tumbled goliath, shot so ignominiously by a debauched ne'er-do-well, and felt that sharp pang of regret, that sense of universal loss that accompanied certain of the deaths he had witnessed. He was about to stand when his eye fell upon something bright.

Half a dozen huge nuggets of the purest gold had rolled out of the mountain-man's leather pouch.

‘Bury 'em both,' he called to the marines, and scooping up the treasure he swept them into his pocket.

Gold.

It threw off the reflections of the candle flames leaping and guttering as
Patrician
worked her way off shore in the first hours of the night. Tomorrow she would appear off Point Lobos, but tonight she would hide herself and her prize in the vastness of the Pacific.

Gold.

A king's ransom lay before him. No wonder Mack had scorned the idea of payment for passing
Patrician
's deserters to the Russians, and no wonder he had not wanted those same men wandering over wherever it was he found the stuff, for that was the only implication that fitted his deed and his character. He would not encourage the Spaniards, for their tentacles would spread inexorably northwards, while the Russians could supply him with those necessities he was compelled to get from civilisation. Powder, shot, steel needles, flints . . . Drinkwater had no idea how many natural resoures the wilderness contained.

But it contained gold.

And what the devil would such an unworldly man as ‘Captain Mack' do with such a treasure? That was a mystery past his divining.

‘Cleared for action, sir!'

‘Very well, Mr Fraser.'

Above their heads the white ensign snapped in the breeze from the north that had blown fresh throughout the night and was only now losing its strength as they came under the lee of the land. From his post on the gun-deck, Quilhampton tried to
locate the little cove where he and the cutter's crew had holed up and from where he had seen the
Patrician
carried off into captivity. Suppose the
Suvorov
was waiting for them under the protection of the Spanish battery on Point Lobos? What would be the outcome of the action they were about to fight?

He found he dare not contemplate defeat, and felt the atmosphere aboard the ship imbued with such a feeling of renewal that defeat must be impossible, no matter what the odds. Those two raids, little enough in themselves, had patched up morale, made of them all a ship's company again, a ship's company that had endured much. There was talk of going home after the job was done, after the Spanish and the Russians had been made to eat their own shit, and the gun-captains kneeled with their lanyards taut in their fists in anticipation of this event.